There’s a crack from floor to ceiling in Birmingham’s Ikon gallery. Luckily, some workers are on the job fixing it. They’ve left a brush, a dustsheet and paint-spattered blue overalls while they get lunch. But is it really safe to hang Renaissance masterpieces by the 15th-century artist Carlo Crivelli in a space that’s in this much disarray?
It’s OK. The museums that have lent their treasures can relax. This is a witty bit of trompe l’oeil by artist Susan Collis. I watched her draw the crack in just two strokes with a steady hand and eye that might have impressed Crivelli himself. She has also made the brush, whose little encrustations of muck are precious stones, and the sheet and coat whose stains are embroidered. It’s a good joke because Crivelli himself is a whiz with trompe l’oeil. His Virgin and Child with a kneeling Franciscan friar, lent by the Vatican Pinacoteca, no less, on the other side of the same wall, has a brilliantly realistic crack painted into the marble on which the Virgin rests her feet, a dark rotting bloom of entropy.
